Memorable but bumpy
A vivid but uneven debut takes place in an Asian-blend fantasy world.
The Bhinian Empire has a “two-child law.” Because boys are more valued, infant girls were smothered or left for wolves until the creation of the City of a Thousand Dolls. Not a city but rather “a large private estate ringed by a high stone wall,” this refuge grooms girls in one of six Houses—Flowers, Beauty, Pleasure, Combat, Jade and Music—until a man claims them as wife or mistress or until (shown less often) a healer or tradesperson selects them as apprentice. Now 16, Nisha has been here since age 6. Her unknown parentage and unique status (working as “Matron’s shadow” rather than training in a House) render her a predictable fantasy archetype. When girls begin turning up dead, Nisha pursues the truth—accidents? murders? suicides?—hoping to circumvent the Council’s plan to sell her and ruin her chance for freedom. Although Forster supplies twists and mystery, moments of revelation are somewhat lackluster. A romance thread targets readers older than those who’ll be riveted by Nisha’s special relationship with wild cats. (Bizarrely, those two themes eventually converge.) Moreover, Bhinian culture is a troublingly arbitrary amalgam of South Asian and East Asian details—jeera puffs and mukhwas, tea ceremonies and fan dancing, names like Akash tar’Vey or Lotus Emperor.
Memorable but bumpy . (Fantasy. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-212130-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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